


Blood of The Covenant

by alcomol



Category: Gorillaz
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 01:44:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13284309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcomol/pseuds/alcomol
Summary: Murdoc visits his dying father one last time.





	Blood of The Covenant

**Author's Note:**

> I watched the end of a show and this drabble decided it needed to exist. Based vaguely on a headcanon I have about Noodle's origins. Kind of written in a weird style, it was 5am. Enjoy!

Hannibal was in jail by the time Sebastian’s health truly started to decline, so it’s up to his least favourite son to sort everything out. Though of course, being Murdoc, his idea of ‘sorting everything out’ means visiting him once while he’s in hospital and then immediately planning a tour so he doesn’t have to deal with the funeral arrangements.

But he does visit. Once. Fuck if he knows why, some sense of obligation, he guesses. He doesn’t think about it too much. Makes him feel weird.

He smokes in his father’s hospital room, because of course he fucking does. Any little thing he can do to speed up the process. And also because neither of them know what to say to each other. They haven’t seen each other in a long while. He looks... smaller. Murdoc thinks about the photo of his dad he keeps in his Winnie. He wonders if his dad has one of him, somewhere private, in his own sanctuary, wherever that is.

Probably not.

Sebastian breaks the silence; he’s always been good at breaking things. “I know you’re not here to give me any well wishes. Spit out whatever it is you want to say to me.”

Murdoc takes a long drag on his cig. What is he even supposed to say? _Thanks for doing the absolute bare minimum required for being a parent? Thanks for being an abusive and spiteful bastard?_ In the end, he settles on, “Why did you take me in?”

“You’re my kid, aren’t you?”

“So were the dozen other green-skinned kids in Stoke.” He’d never asked any of them about it. All those half-siblings of his, he’d never spoken to them, never thought to get to know his extended family. Not that it matters now.

“Those ones had mothers. Mothers who wouldn’t take the money I offered to get rid of the brats. They were their problem. Yours died, so you were my problem.”

“What about Hannibal’s mum?”

“I was actually married to that one. Until _you_ came along.” There’s a note of bitterness in the old man’s voice, but shockingly, Murdoc can’t bring himself to care. All he can think is his birth did her a favour.

“Dunno whyI let you stay,” Sebastian continues, voice rasping with an old, familiar anger. “You were a right waste of space, always in trouble. But I gave you a roof over your head, and food on your plate, and you know, you never once thanked me for all I did for you. Ungrateful little sod.”

Murdoc ignores that, the same way he’s been ignoring it for nearly forty years. But it still hurts. It always hurts. He’s about to give up and leave when Sebastian grunts, “Should have sent you away like the other one.”

“What other one?”

“Last woman who came to me crying pregnancy. Wasn’t from here; was only visiting on a student visa or some bollocks. Said her family would never let her keep it, but wouldn’t get rid of it like I asked. I think she expected me to take it in, but after you, I wasn’t having any more mistakes in my house. Ended up writing to me, said she gave it away to some academy.”

“Good for her.”

“I tried to find them, you know. The kid. Once I found out I was on my way out. Got a fancy government letter back, saying something about the program being discontinued, and if I was smart I wouldn’t ask any more questions.”

Murdoc stubs out the cigarette, eyes narrowed. “So I guess I’ll never know who they were. Fascinating. Thanks for telling me I had a secret sibling and then dropping that you have no idea who or where they are. Arse.”

He makes his way to the door, falling into his old habits and letting his father’s words fade into background noise. “Wish I’d kept them instead of you. They would have been a better kid, and bloody  _grateful_ for what I did for them, for taking them into my home instead of letting them rot in some institute in Japan.”

Murdoc pauses with his hand on the doorknob. “Japan?”

“Yeah.”

“...When was this?”

“What, you expect me to remember every woman I’ve shagged?” Sebastian barks, and much to Murdoc’s discomfort, he sounds exactly like him. “I’unno, kid. Late 80s, early 90s maybe.”

He pauses very a long moment, before eventually turning the handle and opening the door. “Well, this is it, I suppose.”

“That’s it? No thanks, no ‘I love you’?  _Nothing?_ ”

Murdoc turns to survey the dying man. He looks... frail, and old, and yet there’s still the same angry bitter glare in his eyes there’s always been. The same glare in his son’s. A very small voice in his head wails,  _how would you feel if you were him?_ and he pushes it down until it falls silent.  _I already am._

“No. Die mad about it. Goodbye, dad.”

Closing the door firmly behind him, he sighs, turning to scowl at the small girl curled up in one of the hard plastic chairs. “You know, you  _really_ didn’t have to come.”

Noodle grins at him. Her teeth have always been nicer than his - not that that’s a difficult feat - straight and white, but if he squints, he thinks he can just make out an unnatural point in her canines, the same as his decayed old fangs. “I like visiting liminal spaces.”

“You what?”

“Russel told me about them. They’re like, places where the barrier between our world and the next is thinner, and it’s kinda supernatural. Guess it’s all the people who die here, going to the next life.”

“You’re a morbid little kid, you know that?” 

She nods happily and scrambles out of the chair, walking next to him as they make their way out. “Can we get McDonalds?”

“Why, after coming all the way out here to visit my dying father, would I go out of my way to drive you to McDonalds when we have perfectly good food at home?”

She glances up at him through her bangs, bangs that are entirely too long for her to be able to see out of effectively, and he knows he should get them cut, but if he’s honest, he likes the way they kind of make her look like him. “Because I’m your favourite sister?”

“You’re my  _only_ sister.”

“But I’m still your favourite.”

Murdoc raises one eyebrow at her in mock scrutiny. She grins at him again, entirely unrepentant; just like he is, he guesses. She’s like him in a lot of ways, from her messy bangs and sharp teeth to her tendency towards violence and the slight mean streak to her humour. He’s always kind of liked how similar they are, but, really, now he thinks about it, he’s very goddamn grateful that in a lot of ways she’s nothing like him at all.

“Fine, but don’t tell the others or I’ll never hear the end of it.”

She skips in triumph. “You know, it’s times like this that you’re my favourite brother,” she jokes, and something approaching a genuine smile almost twists Murdoc’s lips.

“Don’t push it.”


End file.
